


Colony Ship: Sequel to Missy’s Vault

by maurinejt



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Colony Ship (Doctor Who), Gen, Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-04-30 10:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 20,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14494764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maurinejt/pseuds/maurinejt
Summary: This story begins the instant after our last glimpse of Missy in “The Doctor Falls”, which also marks the end of “Missy’s Vault”.  For all those left on the ship, it is merely a terrifying beginning.  Told from a very familiar point of view, this is what happened to colonists and Tardis travellers abandoned by the Doctor, who must now use all of their wits to survive.  Dangling threads from not only “Missy’s Vault” but this and previous seasons of Doctor Who are woven into a new future that could be.





	1. Chapter 1

The orange glow lit the air around her like that rare sunset where both suns would torch the sky into a mural of flame.

The pain in her back threatened to split her open and she screamed; it was drowned by the explosion around her as the trees turned to charcoal and wisped to ash.

Then, mercifully nothing.

She opened her eyes again to black destruction.

The Doctor. His last stand.

She ached that she couldn’t be with him, and then realized with a shock that the pronoun no longer applied.

He couldn’t be with him. He, the Master, once more.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, if it was a cause to rejoice or mourn; mostly it simply was. He felt…newer…somehow. He looked at his hands, they were darker and larger than the pale digits with chipped fingernail polish that were present a minute ago. These tapered beautifully but there was scarcely a line anywhere, were those dimples on his knuckles when he straightened them? What the hell had he become? Carefully, he stood up.

His waist pinched uncomfortably, and he realized he was still wearing a corset.

Fabulous.

He was a little surprised it held together at all. But then, the nanites that formed it were tenacious; his corset was flame-retardant, bulletproof, and impenetrable to slashing weapons…and that was before he added his own custom features. He spared a quick regret for the loss of his vortex manipulator; it could have powered up when the blast hit him and zapped him away at the same time.

Probably just as well. It might have thrown him into the mess of Cybermen.

His outfit was dirty and singed around the edge of the skirt, and he could feel the air on his back where the fabric was basically gone, but the front was intact. It was tight under the arms and itched. He longed to strip down but he could hear ominous explosions in the distance. No time.

“PREPARE TO BE UPGRADED.”

A Cyberman stood there. Its arm was raised, ready to release the beam that would knock him out and take him away to be chopped up into a metal clone.

Curse the Doctor and his parameter change.

An umbrella incongruously laying amongst the leaf litter seemed to stare at him as he looked frantically around.

Yes.

All the energy from the laser screwdriver’s highest setting had lanced into him. But it also sent the pulse through the corset’s tech he had modified. It was much too strong to contain, the nanites overloaded until they burst and his back was flayed to the bone. But a portion of the deadly force funneled into an object he held in his hand, one he had plucked from the ground where he had planted it mere seconds before.

His umbrella. Created by him and the Doctor to attract and store energy.

He snatched it up and aimed it at the metal man.

All of that force now poured from the tip. Powerful enough to permanently kill a Time Lord, it pulverized the Cyberman in front of him. The once-human thing disintegrated into a heap of metal filings. It smoked.

Even he was impressed.

He only had one immense blast, and it was gone. He had to leave before he stumbled into another Cyberman. He clutched tight to the umbrella. He tried to think, and he was having a hard time. His mind kept leaping from one thing to another.

All right. He remembered an elevator…oh. Right there. He watched…his other self? What? Someone. A person with a round face use it. To go down. He gritted his teeth with the effort to recall. A memory brushed by him; he couldn’t catch it. Then. There was another man with a head shaped like an egg. Egg used to nag at the Doctor, get him tea. The Doctor would have sent him with the people. Small people. Stupidly trusting small people. They were led to safety. By Egg, because Expressive Girl was a Cyberman, and the Doctor would be too busy sacrificing himself so they could all get away. The Master’s lip curled, but surprisingly it lacked venom. He tried to summon some, he failed.

What was wrong with him?

Never mind.

So. Egg was sent off with a bunch of mewling humans. Mondasians. Same thing. Where? “There’s another solar farm five levels above us. If I can get all the children up there and most of the adults…” echoed in his mind.

As if by instinct, he walked over to the elevator facade hanging in the middle of a blasted world of blacks and grays. His hand hovered over the call button. He shook his head. No, he dimly remembered doing that before and ending up in a firefight with an armored Cyberman. It took three of them, plus Expressive Cyber-Girl to bring the thing down. Instead, he felt around the edges of the panel. There—a snickt and it swung back. He was glad of his slender fingers then, as he studied the wires for a moment then carefully, precisely, pulled one out.

The image in front of him wavered like a ripple in the water. A solid wall appeared around the construct extending upwards, riddled with circuits like veins. Half of them were not working, the rest struggled feebly to light. He could almost see the shadow where the gray tower met the roof far above, shattering the illusion of sky.

A mile up? Perhaps not that much, he thought speculatively. But surely—his attention turned back to the opened panel. He made a minute adjustment and rungs popped out one side of the structure, all the way up.

All right.

He slung his umbrella down his front--nestled in the hollow that used to contain cleavage--tip tucked into the waistband of the skirt. He adjusted the handle crook so it caught on his collar, and began to climb.

There were easier things than climbing a ladder in these silly high-heeled boots. That didn’t fit. He realized this after about twenty steps, when he couldn’t feel his toes anymore and the surrounding pressure vise-gripped his feet in excruciating pain. He couldn’t see where to put them because his skirt kept getting in the way, and he couldn’t bend to look because of the umbrella. How in the world had Missy ever managed? He tried to access those memories that had worn this outfit for…well, a long, long time, and they skittered away.

He was halfway up when the world exploded. He thought it was blasted before, now it went. The earth far below him heaved and collapsed, the elevator and the back end of the tower fragmented into the plume of black soot that had been the ground. He watched the rungs beneath him fly away as the tremor flew up the tower, splitting and crumbling, closer and closer. In panic he began to climb frantically to outrun it as the thunder of collapse crescendoed, chasing him upwards.

He trod on the hem of his skirt, his foot slid off the rung. He stepped, and nothing caught him, nothing was there. He felt the umbrella slip beneath his collar, further down into his waistband. He thrashed around, dislodging his other foot; then he was hanging, arms straight rods.  
His sweaty fingers slipped an inch.

He forced himself to calm down. The tower was well anchored enough at the top to resist the forces that buffeted it, so it was falling bit by bit instead of toppling outright. He had a chance if he could just regain his perch, but the wave of destruction moving up the tower was right below him. He felt blindly with numb toes. The rung was…there….

The thin bar he made contact with was gone as soon as he alighted on it. He heard a roar beneath like a hungry animal, his feet swung in the air.

He was NOT going to die like this. He had already died once today, and he wasn’t going to survive that only to be crushed by infrastructure.

With a mighty surge of strength, he pulled himself up. He willed the umbrella to stay put and not fall. He crept hand over hand, pushing his new biceps to their utmost until that glorious moment where his feet struck a solid rung. He pulled his skirts in one hand, hoisted them high and clamped the excess between his teeth. Then he climbed as fast as he dared, wheezing out the sides of his mouth to breathe, faster, faster, all the while hearing the ominous groaning and crashing as chunks flew off to be subsumed in the avalanche below.

He didn’t look down. He gazed ahead, he was close enough to see details over the manufactured sky. Projectors. Balls of ultraviolet emitters. Sprinklers. They grew more distinct as he climbed. He was near the top when he let go of the fabric to inhale more air, his skirt released and billowed around him. He spotted it at last, the entry way to a maintenance crawlspace. The ladder led right to it. Just a few feet more--

He was in. It was a boring, dusty crawlspace, full of blessed, comforting technology. It was as close to a divine plane as he had ever imagined.  
There was a final crash from below, then quiet.

He stuck his head through the hole. A jagged edge of the elevator tower remained, perhaps three feet further down from where he was. The ceiling projectors lit a gray powdered dust cloud that hung there like a fog, nowhere to go. It went on for miles, as far as he could see.

He wondered if the children had gotten out. Then immediately was aghast he cared enough to wonder such a thing. What had Missy done to him?  
But he knew the Doctor. His friend was either dead with them, or five levels above.

The Doctor was not dead. That was unthinkable.


	2. Chapter 2

He could never be helpless when surrounded by tech. In short order he was able to hack the mainframe from a maintenance node, study the schematics and store them in his umbrella. The way to the next floor was a convoluted warren of crawlspaces instead of the straight climb up. But it at least it was more comfortable.

After a few hours, he was not sure even about that.

The boots came off immediately, and his cramped and blistered feet were finally able to stretch out. He left them, padding through the ducts until the walls closed so narrowly that he fell on his hands and knees. His stockings provided a slight cushion on his knees, but only slight. He removed his jacket but couldn’t bring himself to discard it. There were quite a lot of small little items tucked away in it that might come in handy. Skirts are not meant to crawl in, he discovered before he had gone more than a yard. He shimmied out of his, rolled it out diagonally like a bandana, and knotted it over one shoulder, looping under his arm. He stuck his umbrella through it on his back--a warrior carrying a longsword, he thought with some irony. The jacket, arms tied around him, was an extra layer to secure it. He was now in stockings and a dirty, frayed blouse with a missing back. He activated the nanotech on the corset, it released in sweet relief and closed again, readjusting for his new body. That annoying gap in the chest pulled flat. His first instinct was to toss it far, far, away, but it did offer substantial protection. From the front.

He took a deep breath and continued to crawl.

For hours.

Only the layout in his head told him that he was making progress, that he wasn’t just lost and alone. A Time Lord is not invincible, he was very conscious of that. He wouldn’t need to eat, drink, or sleep as regularly as a human, but he did have to do all those things on occasion or he would die, just as they would. It took longer, was all. There was nothing edible in the crawlspace. He had demanded quite a bit of his body in the last several hours; it let him know. When he reckoned he had crawled for an entire day, he allowed himself to nap.  
The fourth day he began to dream of water. The fifth day he loosened a small curved panel off of the wall with trembling fingers and used it as a cup to hold his concentrated urine. It stank. He drank it anyway in a single gulp.

He could go on like this for…well, some time. Awhile. He had to. He had to live. He had to find…

Who?

He wasn’t sure anymore, but the thought pulled him out of dreams verging into nightmares and kept him crawling through the tunnels.

Then the smooth wall around him retreated farther away on all sides and he saw a tiny light ahead. Just a crack through a closed hatch, but it was white and piercing, not the sickly glow of the panels he had followed for days and days. He was able to stand up. The weight on his feet felt strange. His knees burned. Air blew past and it smelled wet. Eagerly he stumbled forward, almost running. Water!

He blasted the hatch open with his umbrella and climbed into a field of golden grain. The elevator stood incongruously in the middle surrounded by the crop, no perception filter here. Some clunky piping a few feet away, he guessed it was the pressure regulating valves and flush mains for irrigation. He knew from the maintenance nodes that the faint whir he heard were the machines harvesting in the distance. The air was blistering hot, and there wasn’t a scrap of anything except for the long yellow grasses. This wasn’t a true ecosystem like the level he had left, with a real atmosphere and a diurnal clock; it was merely a place to grow…whatever those grasses were. He guessed there were other crops out there as well that flourished in mile upon mile of no human interference.

He shifted his feet, they were ice cold. Wait, cold? In this heat? No, wet. Dampness from the ground had seeped through his stockings. He fell to his sore knees and began to dig frantically in the dirt with his fingers. The further he dug the wetter it got until he unearthed a flat, flexible tube that extended under the soil in a straight line. Close inspection revealed tiny holes at regular intervals that would drip water into the roots of the greedy plants. He dropped to his belly and eagerly sucked at the precious water through the holes he had exposed, and after what felt like an eternity of effort, he felt a single drop on his lip. Sick with failure, he sat up. Slowly he lifted his umbrella and aimed the tip towards the pipe structure. Afterwards. it fell from his hand. He waited, bowed over, unable to do anything more.

Nothing happened for a minute. Then, a chorus of soft hisses caused him to raise his head. He saw squirts of water pop up in perfect rows. The spray shot through clods of dirt in a fine mist, from where he sat to the horizon. It sounded through him like a perfect chord, it was miraculous. He lay back between the misty streams and the glorious water filled his mouth, covered his face, drenched his clothing. He didn’t care. It rained and rained and rained. The earth that supported him grew muddy and he felt the mud cake his hair, his back and skirt; he bathed in it. Then, he became conscious of a waterlogged constriction on one wrist. What was--

Oh. He came back to himself. He rose and flicked the irrigation system back to auto with another motion from his umbrella.

He stared at the grain slightly bowed under the weight of water. Then walked over to the nearest row and flexed his forearm in a very specific manner. He looked down at the knife that sprung to hand.

There was still a smear of blood on the pommel he had missed when he wiped it off.

His blood.

He bent down and began to cut the base of the nearest stalk with the knife that had killed him.


	3. Chapter 3

The plants needed to dry out once they were cut. He almost heard the eldritch voice in his ear, “You can’t work it yet, boy, unless you want gaps so wide you can fly ships through,” The owner of the voice called herself Bruise because the striking coloring she was born with gave her the appearance of a ripening black eye. Funny, he hadn’t thought of her in centuries.

Reluctantly, he pulled his mind back to the present. A sustained beam from his umbrella released the moisture from the pile of grasses so fast that steam billowed up. The green plants shriveled to brittle gold as if they had dried for weeks. Bruise’s apprentices used to soak their dried rushes in tubs; sprayed water he found a little trickier. He had to run it for a very long time before enough was absorbed to avoid splitting when the stalks were bent. When he finally turned it off, he stripped naked rather than deal with what was left of his sopping, clammy clothing.

He took the opportunity to study himself. His skin was a lovely bronze, it reminded him with a fond pang of a few incarnations ago. And like his hands, there was an odd lack of wrinkles, rough dents around the joints, or even creases that bodies usually bore. It wasn’t the best physique he’d ever had. The build was too skinny—the term was lanky, he supposed --though not especially tall and only slightly defined muscles on his chest and shoulders.

Other attributes were quite satisfactory however. He grinned.

He pulled out a large needle, string, and folding scissors from one of his pockets of the jacket. Then he gathered few of the wet grasses together. He kept seeing Bruise’s wrinkled purple hands mottled with magenta; showing him patiently how to flex the fiber so it could be woven without breaking. Her words whispered at him as he bundled the thin rods into a looped knot with the string. He twisted the grass around and around and then began to coil it on top of itself in a flat circle. Each inch or so he would anchor it together with a stitch of string. When the waiting cut grasses started to dry out, he padded his soaked clothing around them. They had to stay wet. That was lesson one he learned as Bruise’s apprentice.

He came to her as an ambitious would-be artisan, a distant scion of a family she didn’t dare offend. In reality, it was part of a plot to infiltrate and eventually appropriate her business. The gorgeous and supremely expensive baskets her studio produced provided excellent cover for her black-market empire that spanned three galaxies. His intention was to leave her network in place to serve a grander machination, so it amused him to play the obedient initiate. The coup might have stayed relatively restrained if she hadn’t had the gall to order him whipped once. Instead, it became the most thorough covert massacre he had ever orchestrated fueled by righteous anger. He still felt a warm glow of pride to think of that triumphant day when he had literally watered her gardens with her own blood.

He didn’t know how long he sat coiling and coiling. There was no night here. Only weather when he made it, and he ran the spray so often to keep his materials flexible that the air was heavy with humidity. Sweat poured off him as he bent over the slowly growing basket. At least there were no insects to bite. His hands ached from pulling the grasses tight over and over and his back from bending. He kept having to push back damp hair from his face, it appeared to be black with a wave through it that came about to his chin. He nearly took his knife and chopped it off. Nearly. As he wove, he once again saw the well-lit work room, fans wafting cool air above as he made the simplest forms with the other apprentices to be sold to the nouveau rich who wanted to impress but couldn’t afford the real masterworks. There was a rhythm to it that was strangely seductive; it took him out of himself, out of his plans, his schemes. It was almost frightening, that humming contentment. It was a glimpse into a life that he adamantly loathed the thought of, yet tantalized him with the voice of a siren: A happy existence of quiet creation in the company of his beloved friend and their tiny daughter. It was like a fairy tale about someone else.

He willed himself not to think any more, so he didn’t. He was left with the motion of his hands, the pulling, the flick of a needle. The coarse wind of the grasses. One coil bounded by another. It filled his world and went on for days. The relentless blaring light and the stifling heat never varied.

Then he was done. His vessel was smaller than he would like, but he still hadn’t eaten which was starting to be a critical factor. It was inelegant, squat, with a small round lid. Bruise would have uttered scathing critiques over its lopsided silhouette, but she wouldn’t have complained one whit about the construction. It was as tight as he’d ever made anything.

He sliced up his shredded stockings further with his much-abused stiletto. He created a series of interconnected knots, when he was done it looked like an eight-year-old’s first macramé project. He braided some long strands that were left, tied them on to the tangle.

It was time to venture beyond the sea of grain.

He had studied the specs, and they indicated that a different crop was likely off to the right, five acres away. The details as to which crop were not given, the rudimentary AI aboard ship would adjust as needed. He set off in the correct direction, taking only his skirt/strap looped around him and his umbrella he used as a walking stick. His jacket was tied around his waist.

It was a long walk. He wasn’t sure that it was in reality or simply felt long because he wanted something to eat so badly. The grasses abruptly ended. He could see the dividing line where vine-like plants that came up to his waist grew instead.

Tomatoes.

They weren’t ripe, but small green bunches clung here and there. A few dotted over the acres showed a pale orange.

He picked a few closest, gathered them on the ground and pointed his umbrella tip at them.

At first nothing happened, but then the green tomatoes turned first to a green-yellow, then a rosy blush; attaining full red in less than a minute. He stopped. Grabbed one and shoved it in his mouth. It burst warm tomato juice all over him and it was delicious. It only took a few bites to eat the rest in the batch.

He untied his jacket from his waist, and lay it flat, open on the ground, inside up. He plucked a smaller needle and a finer spool of thread than the one he had used on his basket from one of the pockets. He made a couple of experimental folds with the jacket. Then, roughly and quickly, he began to sew. When he was done, he had a sloppy bag with trailing arms which he knotted together for a handle. He then collected as many green tomatoes as it would hold. They would travel better green, anyway.

The walk back seemed to take longer than the walk out. The pouch of tomatoes dug into his armpit with the jacket arms truncated by the knot. He hadn’t been sure enough of the tensile strength of his thread to sew cuff to cuff and let the stitches bear the full weight. He wondered if he could rig a kind of crude backpack. But it would have to be later. He was more than ready to leave, to get out of the heat and monotonous landscape that seemed forever stuck in time where the sun didn’t move. He saw the elevator as a tiny dot in the middle of waving gold, but one he could measure his progress by as it grew bigger. And bigger. And then he stood beside it.

He stowed all his belongings in the crawl space except the precious basket he had made. He removed the lid, set it alongside. Then, he called the spray for what he hoped was the last time. The carefully coiled reeds had to be soaked so they would swell. Then, maybe? If he was lucky. If he was skilled enough. If the memory pounded into his head in a distant century had truly guided his hands….

The droplets dotted the now dry basket. Then soaked it. The minutes passed. He thought he saw liquid collect at the bottom. Everything ran with water though, and he couldn’t tell for sure.

He opened the pressure as far as it would go.

The grain bent sideways in front of him under the weight of the heavy torrent of spray.

He watched the level rise in his little vessel. It rose. It held. And hardly daring to breathe, he watched it fill.

He let it rain even after the drops were landing on the top hard enough to upset the surface tension and spill over. Then he waved his umbrella like a conductor’s baton and it ceased.

The ground was a soupy morass. The field looked like a giant had held an all-night country dance with his giant friends. The air was heavy with the odor of fetid greenery. But his little vessel was full.  
He ran his fingers over the fibrous belly, they came away wet. He told himself it was acceptable. It would drip a little, but in theory the constant presence of water would keep the grains swollen to prevent leakage. He squelched over to the elevator and opened the panel. A couple of breaths later, the familiar walls around it appeared with rungs sticking out.

He opened the hatch he had come from and collected his things. He came to the blouse and decided it was better served looped across his back between his tomatoes and his non-tomatoed arm to provide more support. He’d fix something better later. He wove the umbrella between the blouse and skirt loop. The dripping vessel nestled in the stocking-knot rig, and the attached long braid slipped over his head.

Only then did he spot the charred corset lying on the synthetic floor. He had forgotten it. He told himself he should bring it. He should take everything off, pull the thing around him, and drape it all back on again. Even half-burnt it was the best defense he had against the cybermen that were still out there. He took his hand off the inside rungs and picked it up. He held it for a moment, touched the faux stitching, the lace. Then let it fall. No part of himself could he persuade to put it on, or add it to the burden on his back. It was faintly repulsive to him now; an intimate item that belonged to another person. He couldn’t cling to the safety of the past. He wasn’t Missy anymore.

He spoke a word and the abused lingerie decomposed into what looked like black mulch as the nanobots deactivated.

He looked up through the circle of the open hatch to the column of rungs stretching to the sky. He saw again the faint shadow where it joined the ceiling.

At least he wasn’t in high heels this time.

Four levels up.


	4. Chapter 4

He hadn’t heard the drum beats in his head for a long, long, time, but they always did come and go. Mostly they were faint and unobtrusive, like the sound of his own breathing. Soothing even. Only at the very worst points in his life had the percussion ever gotten loud enough to hurt his head, as it was now, each beat hammering against his cranium.

The starbursts of red and yellow he saw with each strike were new.

He laughed and threw back his head and spread his arms and they turned into claws. His laugh screeched weirdly high.

He stopped.

Really? Is that what he sounded like? He realized he hadn’t said anything since he changed except an occasional grunt or curse.

“I am the Master.” He proclaimed to the cavern, the shine of the stalactites flickering. Cavern? Wasn’t he in a maintenance duct of a space ship? He sounded young and unsure. “I am the Master!” he shouted louder and this time his voice actually cracked, on ‘Master’.

He tried to take that in for a moment. His clawed hands had turned to furry paws. Maybe that was why his voice sounded strange. It would make sense if he was a dog. A small yapping dog.

Or maybe he really should not have eaten the mushrooms on the last level.

But he had consumed all of his tomatoes days ago, and there was nothing that grew in that dark, narrow space except fungi. He had stuffed his ex-tomato bag full and slung it beside his basket of water; the latter down to a muddy puddle in the bottom now that tasted like liquid hay. Only then did he gnaw at a handful of mushrooms as he walked along. He was enough of a Time Lord not to choose a poisonous one but apparently that wasn’t always a failsafe for other properties.

Look, butterflies! He barked at them.

The last level was so short that the crawlspace above was able to open to a full walkway. He ran along the corridor. He skipped and leaped to catch the bright pink butterflies that flew out of his reach. Maybe those were tasty. Maybe he could make himself a shirt from their glittering wings. He glared at the shirt he was wearing, and the skirt that dug at his waist. He couldn’t remember back to the morning why he had thought it was so important he put them on today, but he knew there must be some reason. There had to be. They were stiff with dirt and smelled like body odor and rot.

He was relieved to note his hands seemed to be back, he saw them as he made a grab for the alluring rainbow wings. Unperturbed, the insects flew through the corridor out a crack beaming with white light. He had seen the light before. It made him deliriously happy, so filled with joy he cried, weeping large tears. He climbed up the few rungs and reached for the handle above him. He pulled and pulled, terrified at the thought of losing the gorgeous butterflies forever. Then, with a final yank something freed and he opened into sunlight.

It dazzled him with a thousand rainbows, from azure to emerald, to scarlet and deep violet. The grass beneath his hand was so soft, a cushiony pillow of green. He pulled himself the rest of the way out.  
He was caressed by pixie ribbons darting here and there and he didn’t want to accidently let one escape, so he carefully shut the hatch. It blended with the grass almost seamlessly. And yes, there was the blazing white arc of the elevator, this time shining with electricity. There was sweetness on the breeze, and a touch of acrid smoke.

Explosion. Trees burning. Birds flying away.

A girl with a hole where her heart should be. Shocked, betrayed, looking at the Doctor. Looking at him.

The glints in the air weren’t butterflies. They were Cybermen. He heard the crunch of the ground beneath their metallic tread. The tearing whine of their rockets. They came—

With a wild cry he crouched down, holding his head as if his frail arms could possibly protect it. Where was his umbrella? He reached around but could not contort enough to pull it out through the mess of straps across his back. Perhaps he could be a rock. If rainbows could turn to Cybermen, if fresh air could choke him with cinders, then why couldn’t he be a rock? He would not move for fifty years, shut up in a prison by his oldest friend…

No, that was another life. He was a rock now. He had run away from a war, like he did eons ago…

No, that wasn’t right either.

He could have run away. Like he always had, like his other self expected him to do. They could have burned through the universe together like meteors, leaving a swath of destruction in their path he could only dream of alone. He had chosen to stay. For a reason that eluded him now, but he knew was the most important decision he had ever made. Because what happened then—

What happened.

He—

No, it was too terrible.

He had—

He couldn’t remember. That was it, the time differential. It was all gone. Right. Even though he knew it worked differently for the last one, the one who had already been through it once, twice before. You took the final memory with you.

The blood. He remembered the blood. It was warm on his hand. Both hands, because he remembered it both ways; the one who felt the knife and the one who wielded it.  
He moaned, rocking.

“Excuse me.”

Now the wind smelling like smoke was talking to him.

“Who are you? Why are you wearing Missy’s clothes?”

A girl stood in front of him. She was a crested wave breaking on a rock. Then she opened eyes that gleamed red and yawned to display pointed teeth.

His fingers lengthened into knives still stained with his own blood. He stood. He roared.

The girl retreated, the sound of the ocean going with her.

The world rushed around him like a watercolor that was still wet. He waited for it to ebb.

He was hungry, so he pulled out some more mushrooms.


	5. Chapter 5

He woke to darkness and found someone had tied him to the bed.

“What is—this--? He cried in protest.

“You were raving,” came a matter of fact voice from the darkness. “Talking gibberish. Lunging at people. We knocked you out and put you to bed. Wasn’t any help for it.”

He tried to think. It was difficult to string thoughts together but at least the bed, the nightstand, and the window looked like a bed, a nightstand, and a window. Even in the dark they held no surprises. The hint of char in the air he now correctly identified as wood smoke. Either for cooking or in a fireplace. He went limp in relief. One connection became clear, at least. “The mushrooms. It must have been the mushrooms.”

“Alit saw you eating some.” The man at his side agreed. "After you roared at her.” The last was reproachful.”

“I am,” he paused. “Sorry.”

“You’re Missy. I mean, you’re whoever came after Missy. Right?”

“I’m the Master.”

“Yeah…I liked Missy better. More personable, you know. The Master,“—Egg, for the Master finally recognized Egg--spoke in a tone of mock hushed awe with his hands spread dramatically. “--is a bit pretentious.”

“Well, it is what it is.” He turned away, exasperated.

“Anyway, the Master, being how you’re tied to a bed and I have a satchel full of mushrooms I can feed you whenever I want to make you see little green men, where is the Doctor?”

The Master gave his interrogator an incredulous glance. Then his mouth twitched. It was suddenly funny. It was hilarious. He laughed long and hard.

“Isn’t he here?” He finally said after regaining some sobriety.

“No.”

“Well, I haven’t seen him since I left him in front of the farmhouse.” He tried to shrug but the ropes made it awkward.

“Since you…and the other one…left,” Egg corrected easily.

He hadn’t wanted to think about that. “Yes.”

“What happened, then? If you weren’t with the Doctor?’

“I had some unfinished business.” He said enigmatically. “After it was concluded everything blew up. I escaped through the maintenance tunnels by the elevators.

“And you came here.”

“He told me he was sending everyone five levels up to another solar farm. I assumed he’d join you.”

Egg was quiet for a moment. The moonlight from the fake moon projected onto a fake starlit sky haloed his bald head. “No, you didn’t. Because you know the Doctor. He’d have to stay to blow it up himself. So why are you really here?”

To enslave you all and bend you to my will, he wanted to say. But it was hollow because he’d already tried that. And how well had it gone? He almost laughed again. Then his brain caught up with his ears.

“Where is the Doctor.” It was more of a dangerous statement than a question.

“Where do you think. Miss-Master? He stalled them to give us as much time as he could, then blasted the floor to get them all. He didn’t expect to survive! That was the point.”

No. No. His Tardis surely saved him.

(His Tardis wasn’t there.)

He thought his way out. He always had a plan. He always knew he was going to win, right?

The floor had exploded. The whole level was reduced to rubble. Egg was right, someone had to have stayed to touch it off.

Someone—

He had given the Doctor his Confession Dial. So, the Doctor knew—perhaps he…he didn’t want to--

Oh. Oh no. No. NO. That couldn’t be it. He had never meant that much to his friend; was never so important to him that they would die for each other, or because of each other, or--

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe in a world the Doctor was gone.

He dreamed of killing him, he had tried so hard, so long, but now when he actually believed he might have done it—

No.

He didn’t realize he was saying it under his breath until he felt a form hover over him.

“Hey, what, it’s okay. You’re here. You made it.” The weak smile and the hesitant pat on his knee that accompanied the words were not reassuring.

“Of course I did! Get your hand off me.” He snapped, but it didn’t help.

The universe without the Doctor in it gaped black and empty and he never realized it until this moment. He never had to, the one constant in both their lives were that the other would turn up eventually. Until the one day it became a lie. This day. Right now.

He couldn’t do this. He shut the pain away. Drove it with knives and pokers until it cowered in a corner it couldn’t bother him.

Egg retreated back as if the Master had turned rabid. “I need to know what you are here to do.”

He knew the man was afraid, but trying to be brave. He could feel it in the way Egg’s voice trembled.

The Master propped himself up as much as he could, pulling against the restraints.

“I’m here to get you all out,” he stated calmly.


	6. Chapter 6

A massive crack of electricity woke him.

“Look!” cried a voice from the door, frightened, young, and female.

CLANG! CLANG! The farmhouse bell rang vigorously.

Cybermen. They found him.

He pulled himself up and grabbed the umbrella that was leaning against a wall. He was still weak, but at least the ropes that tied him to the bed had been removed.  
He tottered out the door onto the porch in an identical farmhouse to the last. He recalled vaguely that all the solar farms had one. A working colony ship would often assign caretakers on critical levels, a nicety he had never bothered about when he formed his little society from the crew and activated the ship.

A girl was there, staring at the horizon. He thought he recognized her from his Missy days.

Then he saw what the girl was looking at. A flash, but it didn’t come with metal men and laser fire. Or dark clouds and rain.

Instead, for a moment, he could see a vast room with solid walls that hummed with lights and current, framing the countryside. Then it was gone, leaving only trees and fields.

Crack.

Walls.

No. Countryside.

“Do you see?” She turned to him, eyes wide. “What is it?” She was on this side of hysterical.

Another crack, another flash.

He knew what it was.

“We’re on a ship, Egg has told you, right? A massive colony ship.”

“Egg? You mean Nardole.”

“Whatever. Think of the ship as an…animal.”

“Like a cow?” The girl asked. The “cow” got a little shrieky as another crack tore through their world, revealing constructed walls.

“Sure. Fine. So you have the mouth, where the cow eats and the digestion where it gets energy from its food and, um, the other end.” He coughed slightly.

“Okay.” Her eyes were large and luminous.

“So what happens if something is taken away? What happens if, oh say, part of the digestive tract…disappears, simply ceases to be?”

“The cow couldn’t handle the food it eats. It would starve.”

“Well, this ship works much like a cow; the farms like this one provide food, light, and heat for the levels below made for the colonists to live in. Energy is produced to allow that. Resources flow back and forth the length of the ship.”

“All right.”

“We removed a nice cross section of guts with that fireworks show in your old home. Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, digestion…all of it with a swath missing. We lost an entire level, from side to side. That whole web of integral systems built to sustain your fragile bodies—poof.”

The girl was silent, staring at the horizon changing to walls and back again.

“The backup systems kicked in afterwards so it all looked fine…for a time. But ultimately the damage is too great. This ship is ancient anyway, or, the bottom half is. Everything there is old to carry the load it already did.”

A particularly violent crack created a shower of sparks from somewhere above. They faded before they reached the ground. With a small yelp the girl jumped back.

“This is a warning,” he said softly, watching the sky. The ceiling. “The ship is in trouble. It’s been compensating, but that’s starting to break down; there’s too much energy moving through conduits that can’t handle it long term. I’m sure Egg is buried in a terminal somewhere frantically trying to reroute the flow so it can stabilize.”

“Then it will go away?” the girl asked, shrill with anxiety.

“Oh, likely all will be under control soon. For now.” The second of brilliant light exposed the trees and fields, the following dark showed the unmistakable pinhole lights of tech. Another round of stray sparks, fewer this time. Then it was back to the familiar night sky. “It may even hold for a while. But this is the beginning of the end. Each flash you see is something critical that fried. Something that can’t be replaced.”

The girl caught one of his hands in hers. “Please, will you stay? Will you help us?”

The warmth of her hand tingled. It forced him to remember another time his hands were caught, gently, lovingly. He looked down at her, deep into her wide, frightened eyes.

“I am the last person you should ask for that.” He told her as honestly as he could. He removed his hand.


	7. Chapter 7

Everywhere he went, the girl followed him.

She brought him water when he pulled long hours in his makeshift workshop that formerly was the tool shed.

She created the lean-to on one of the outside walls where the tools that saw regular use were put now after the Master had yelled at a couple of farmers barging in. He heard her through the rough wall, talking to them earnestly. “He’s working.” He caught. “Can’t be disturbed.”

When he emerged for the evening meal or to stretch his legs, she was industriously digging around in the soil nearby, either to plant or weed, he wasn’t sure. Or she was fiddling with the canvas flap she had rigged up that now protected the tools.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Egg cornered him one day in his tool shed fortress. There was a polite knock that shook the structure and a hesitant. “Hello? The Master?”

“The Egg?” he returned wryly.

Egg entered, carefully shutting the door behind him. He carefully used the newly installed hook and eye latch to keep it shut.

“I need to know if you’ve done…something…to Gazron.”

“Who?” The Master prodded the metal slag smoldering on its blacked tray with the tip of his folded umbrella.

“Gazron,” Egg said with impatience. “Young girl? Brown hair, blue eyes. Always mooning over you?”

“I didn’t know her name,” The Master said carelessly. He lay the umbrella on the table in front of him next to the tray.

“It’s Gazron,” insisted Egg mildly.

“I’ve talked to her.”

“About?”

He looked squarely at Egg. “What are you accusing me of?”

“She acts…not like herself. She’s besotted. I have to know if you—you—”

Part of him very much enjoyed how red Egg was turning and how hard it was to get the words out.

“Yes?” he goaded.

“You know!” Egg said.

He laughed. “Don’t be absurd. I’m a Time Lord. She’s a child. It’s ridiculous.”

Egg, stared at him, unfazed. “Ridiculous for the Doctor. I’m not so sure about you.” He paused. “You don’t look that much older than her, you know.”

“What?” Now Egg had his full attention.

“Have you seen yourself? Since you changed, I mean.”

“Don’t be silly.”

There was a pause.

“’Don’t be silly’…yes? Or, ‘Don’t be silly’…no?”

“Either. I’m busy.”

“And that’s another thing…you’ve been here for weeks, you say you want to help us, you took over this tool shed to work in and we only see you at supper. Some days not even that. What are you doing?”

The Master gave him a sardonic smile. “Growing as a person, I’m sure. Expanding my horizons, trying something completely novel.”  
Egg’s eyebrows went up in surprise.

“I’m going to call for help.”

“What kind of help?” he said suspiciously, his glasses slid, he pushed them back up. “The distress signal we came in on is still going out…do you actually want someone to stumble into a ship full of Cybermen?”

“This help is fairly…specialized.” Books could be written on the portent of the pause.

“Oh?” Egg looked confused. “I mean, if you need a hand, I could…we could…”

“Well, as you pointed out, Gazron seems keen to step in should I require assistance, so don’t worry your little head about it. Just keep colonizing along! And let me work.”

“Don’t you dare, with Gazron. Don’t.” Egg shook an emphatic finger in the Master’s direction.

“Why, Egg.” The Master said reproachfully. “You need to have more faith.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was creating the thing that was giving him a headache.

The container was psychic, it had to be. Which isn’t hard with a full Tardis at one’s disposal, most of the bits that make a Tardis a Tardis are psychic, and a well-stocked one had the boxes all ready to go if its Time Lord or Lady called for one. He was pretty sure his did. Somewhere. Maybe. The Doctor had chucked his out; he had a theory that the boxes’ purpose could be reversed and used as a homing beacon. He always suspected that was how the Time Lords found him after he tried to escape, right before they exiled him to earth. The bastards.

The Master had spent what felt like most of his life recreating Time Lord technology from scratch, but this one threatened to defeat him.

After several aborted attempts to use fused glass and metal, he managed a kind of polymer by combining elements he mined from the crawlspace, trying to extract what he needed without impairing what function the ship had left. The problem was he had to imbue it with enough psychic power to launch through time and space. Or it was all for nothing. He didn’t have near enough juice himself, it had taken nearly everything he had to imprint the message and the recipient.

The lightning storms came almost every day. The sparks got worse. Trees had been hit. Small fires started. A few days ago, there had been a marked decrease in the water flow that they couldn’t resolve, and plants were beginning to wilt. He suspected his shenanigans on the level with the grasses may have contributed, but he kept that to himself.

There was no time.

“Gazron, can you help me?”

Gazron put down the trowel she had been digging in the dirt with. “Of course!” She stood up, delighted, and walked over to him. “How?”

He returned the smile. Good.

“Well, you know I’ve been trying to send for help. To get us off the ship.”

“I know.” She didn’t disguise her admiration.

He took both her hands in his. “I only know one person who could possibly come this close to a black hole without getting stuck, or sucked in,” he told her truthfully. “And that person is a long way off; so far, I don’t even know where. I need your help to boost the hypercube, otherwise it won’t find anything.

“I don’t know about that,” she shrunk a little but did not let go of his hand.

“I do,” he said kindly. He brushed a lock of hair back tenderly that had escaped from her braid. “I need time energy. The psychic energy of potential will work just fine. And you have that in abundance.”  
She closed her eyes against his hand and didn’t pull away.

She trembled against his fingers trailing gently down her cheek.

“Come then,” he said softly. “Let me show you.”

He had cleared away the debris from his work. The transparent cube sat alone in the middle of the table. It pulsed.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“Touch it,” he told her. “Just a little, with the tip of your finger.”

She did. Then gasped. “I heard a voice talking in my head. It isn’t your voice though--”

“No. Keep your finger there. Tell me what you hear.”

She listened. “’In darkness, are we revealed. Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage; good is good in the final hour; in the deepest pit. Without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis.’” She removed her finger. “It’s repeating now. What does it mean?”

Perfect. He smiled indulgently. “Is the message meant for you, my beautiful girl?”

“No,” she shook her head quickly, chastened. “I’m sorry.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder for reassurance. He lingered there a few beats longer than was necessary. “Now, it’s ready. I just need to send it. Will you sit down?” He courteously offered her a spindle back chair next to the table. She flushed and sat.

He seated himself in a matching chair opposite her.

“All right. Place your whole palms on either side of the cube.”

“Oh!” she startled. “It’s not solid anymore. It moves. It’s like jelly….”

“Yes. I’m going to put one of my hands on yours, on the cube. If your hand sinks in a little, it’s supposed to. The other goes on your temple, like this.” He cupped the side of her head, his fingers placed precisely on her satin-smooth skin.

She smiled at him, nervously.

“Don’t be afraid,” his voice was gentle, but it caught on “afraid”.

“I could never be afraid if you’re there,” she managed, greatly daring.

He shut his eyes against the image of perfect trust.

And began.


	9. Chapter 9

“What did you do???!!”

A pile of dried tan slivers he was working with scattered all over the table from the violent motion of the crude door. The Master quickly sprang up to shut it behind his accuser, latched it closed, then returned to the other side of worktable. A table between them wasn’t a bad idea, cyborgs were difficult to incapacitate. He had never seen Egg that upset. He didn’t even think it was possible.

“I called for help. What else?” he answered flatly.

“Gazron.” Egg could hardly get the words out. “Gazron is dead.”

“I heard.” The Master shook his head sadly. “A tragedy. She was so young. To be caught in that electrical storm…Hazran thinks she got tired and settled down to take a nap.” He sat down, smoothed the paper he had been jotting notes down, picked up his pen.

“I think—no, I know--that you killed her.” Egg’s eyes blazed.

“She was found outside, under a scorched tree. Why do you think I did anything?”

“So, where is the cube, then?” Egg shot back.

“Sent. Where else would it be?”

“I think you killed Gazron to send it, that’s what I think!”

Against his will, the Master remembered vividly how all her thoughts, her feelings, her young untouched life poured into the cube at his direction. He felt them pass. The happiness she felt at a birthday, the chocolate cake Hazran made with precious candles lit on top. Whispering with the girl, Alit, and giggling. The long hours of fear crouched under her bed listening to shotgun fire. A tense march to a new home that looked like the old with bald Nardole in charge. Then a stranger came; the wisest, handsomest boy she had ever known …the Master wrenched his concentration away before he saw himself as she did. He opened his eyes to the real Gazron slumped over the table. She was stark white and curiously hollow to his senses, drained of what animated her. The hand sunken into the cube was skeletal even as the little box on the table glowed and pulsed with her life. Each pulse was a heartbeat and he could almost see the river of her essence flowing from her into it. It slowed, near the end, like a pitcher almost upturned as it continued in a thin drizzle. He waited. The last drop left her with a final sigh from her body. Then nothing. He knew the instant she was gone. Her hand slipped away and fell on the table. Her head lolled onto her chest. She was empty. There was nothing in this room but himself, a glowing cube, and a slack corpse.

He lay her on her side and conscientiously folded up her knees and arms. Rigor mortis would make it difficult to move her later if she wasn’t properly positioned. He threw a blanket over the form. He went outside and smoothed over the dirt from her labors and pulled over a few tufts of loose plants to cover the freshly worked soil. Back inside, he added her trowel to tools he arranged over the rough farm blanket, carelessly thrown in a corner of the shed and evidently forgotten months ago. Don’t look too closely at its shape.

During supper, he told everyone he met Gazron setting out across the field on his way over. She was going to fetch an errant cow. She thought it would take some time, but not to worry, she would find her own meal when she came in if she was very late.

“Odd. None of the livestock is missing,” Egg said with a pointed glance.

“Perhaps she thought she saw something she didn’t. Or, she just wanted time alone. You were the one telling me she’d been acting strange recently,” the Master replied conversationally. He took a bite of steak to general nods and mutters, plus Egg’s suspicious stare.

He carried her out hours later, while everyone was busy during the first storm of the night. He lay her beneath a blackened tree, to sell the obvious story.  He was about ready to leave her, when some impulse he didn’t understand made him kneel beside her and kiss her forehead tenderly. He turned quickly and walked away. He didn’t look back.

He realized that Egg was still glaring across the table from him, waiting.

“It’s an interesting theory,” The Master agreed. He stood and leaned forward on knuckles pale against the grain of the tabletop, suddenly furious. “But even more interesting?” he hissed vehemently, “Is that all the children in this entire merry band of hapless followers you have fought so long and so hard for, that the Doctor died for--” --he bit the words off over a burst of pain--“All of these people will perish just like him if we can’t get them off this ship, and we are out of time. So, Egg, what would you do? What brilliant solution do you harbor in that bald head? Anything?”

“Not to kill an innocent girl!” Egg shouted at him.

“This is what I have,” The Master told him bluntly. “I’m not the Doctor. But then, he didn’t do so hot either, did he? He dumped it all on you to figure out.” The last was said through a twisted smile.

“I’ve lead them to safety and kept them alive,” it was spat between gritted teeth.

“Yes, as he intended. I know. Really, I do. But right now, keeping them going for today only serves as a countdown to their final end in a handful of days. If you don’t like my methods, fine. But ask yourself, does it matter if it works?” He shook his head in disgust. “Why am I even talking to you? Do what you want! Go ahead, spread your vicious little rumors. Share your suspicions. Sow discord and fear just when we need them most to pull together.”

There was quiet for a moment.

“You know I won’t do that. You counted on it.”

“Well, cheer up! If I’m wrong, you can have your fill of smug satisfaction for the rest of your days. Though that won't take long, so I’d do my best to enjoy it.”


	10. Chapter 10

It was sweltering. The grass was brown. The irrigation lake reduced to a muddy puddle. The Master sat with Egg in the tool shed, hunched over the bald man’s laptop trying to divert the water from the Cybermen down below up to their doomed level. Every time they funneled it closer, it would revert back into place. It was very much like trying to tie a bow on a package one-handed.

“I’ve got to somehow freeze it while you shift,” he complained to Egg. “Maybe if I go in from the maintenance terminal in the elevator hatch while you move it here—”

“That one can’t override shipwide function, it can only be done at specific nodes, we tried—”

“Then maybe a race so short-sighted just deserves to die,” the Master replied in caustic frustration.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

The farm bell. The light from the cracks in the boards shone steady daylight, not a hint of storm.

Both of them jumped up.

For one wild moment, he thought his help had come. Then they heard…jets.

“Everyone’s in the field, they’ll be slaughtered!” screamed Egg. He grabbed his laptop and they raced outdoors.

The sky was filled with Cybermen. The projected sun caught the sparkle of a million metal points. The air was heavy with the scent of iron and blood. Only pieces of cloud and blue were visible.

But strangely, they didn’t fire. They didn’t speak.

They landed. There were so many, they covered the fields, they stood in the mud. Jammed shoulder to shoulder, stretching to the horizon right up to the edge of an invisible ring around the farmhouse.

They waited, silently.

Then, a figure stepped forward into the no-mans-land of bare grass.

It was a woman. She was wearing a black coat and slacks; a black shirt of a slightly different shade poked out at the collar. The whole ensemble was threadbare and a bit too big for her. Her brown hair was pulled neatly back in a bun and her sharp features were extremely familiar. She headed regally to the farm house porch. Egg and the Master hurried up the side steps and along the front veranda to meet her.

“Do you want to take this or should I,” Egg asked the Master quietly.

“You,” he replied at once. “I’ll step in if I have to.”

“Egg thing!” she exclaimed imperiously. “Are you there? Egg?”

“Some things don’t change,” Egg muttered under his breath. Then: “Yes?” to her. He moved forward, standing at the top of the front steps. The Master trailed along and hid behind a handy pillar.

“Where is the Doctor?”

Egg glanced back, the Master shook his head emphatically.

“Not here?” Egg said. It would have been nice if there wasn’t such a quaver in his voice.

The woman stood right in front of him. “Then, where, exactly.”

“Out?” stalled Egg.

She laughed. “All right, little Egg man. Give me the Doctor, or I will kill everyone here. Or make them into Cybermen. I haven’t quite decided. So?”

Egg turned just a little to plead for help with his eyes. The man behind the pillar said nothing, just continued to stare at the imperious figure, lips thinned in determination.

“The Doctor is dead!” Blurted out Egg. “I couldn’t give him to you if I wanted to. The Cybermen killed him!”

Oh, that was bad. Very bad. “You idiot!” he whispered fiercely.

“Dead,” she said slowly, softly. “The Doctor is dead??? He died…and I didn’t kill him???!!”

Egg turned from the woman to the man behind him with horror. “You are both completely mad, you know that, right?”

The Master couldn’t think, just watched the appalling scene unfold, no idea how to stop it. “Yes, and my oh my, have you done it now!”

The woman’s eyes were like thunder. “Kill them. Kill them all.” She ordered.

“Run!! shouted Egg.

In the precious moments it took the Cybermen to power up their blasters for maximum destruction, he and Egg ran from the house. “This way!” the Master yelled and tugged Egg to veer off to the right. They tumbled into the shadow of a tree, and crouched on the ground, braced.

The Cybermen synched their blast and all the beams from a thousand foci all met in the exact same point. The farmhouse exploded into smithereens. Wood and metal and brick roared into the air together accompanied by the pulse of a mighty sonic wave that rolled outward as the concentrated firepower imploded at the joined target. The epicenter flattened the Cybermen around it in a perfect circle. They were so close that the metal men caught in the blast radius crashed into the ones outside, and those tipped over the ones behind and the wave steamrolled out, like dominoes. They were packed too tightly and there was too much momentum to catch themselves, they simply toppled one after the other, with the bang and screech of metal on metal and frantic cries of “DELETE!”. In seconds, the ground was covered with thrashing Cybermen.

“Get up! Get up!” the woman screeched.

But they couldn’t. They were wedged in and couldn’t find a free piece of earth to lift themselves off of.

The Master and Egg, the latter still clutching his laptop, scrambled to their feet instantly.

“Where are the children, the adults? I don’t see anyone but us,” The Master frantically looked around.

“They are supposed to go to the elevator crawlspace in an emergency. We’ve drilled for it.” Egg said, more calmly than was really warranted.

“Can you blow something up?” The Master asked him. “Quickly! They’re coming around.”

“I need a spark to set off an explosion. Do you have your umbrella?”

“It’s in the tool shed.”

“We’ll make a run for it.”

“All right.”

The few Cybermen who had finally gotten up were marching around. They looked back and forth. There was a deafening concussion and sizzle as they began to raze trees, rocks, areas of long dead grass. Anything that could hide something larger than an ant.

It was not strictly necessary, but their Mistress was beside herself with fury.

Then one sighted them.

They ran faster. They’d never make the shed but to stand and accept death by Cyberman was much worse.

That whirring power up, that precious couple of seconds of charge—

And nothing.

Silence.

None of the Cybermen moved.

“Destroy them!! Delete!! Why are you standing there--!! The overwrought feminine voice carried across the quiet.

Then as one, the whole field of faces turned to the sky/ceiling. They stood together, freeing themselves by moving in unison. Then they rocketed up.

The noise as thousands of Cyberman hit the roof was deafening. It fairly exploded. A pause and the mortal spectators heard the concussive sound of the next level being hit, and the next, and the next.  
When it finally stopped, it was followed by the far-off whistling of air escaping.

The daylight sapped to a twilight. Only the emergency power kept light on at all.

“We have minutes.” Egg told him. “If we’re lucky, maybe an hour and we lose the air. We lose heat. And if the engines stop, we get sucked in the black hole.”

“I know.” The Master said, thinking furiously.

In the sudden quiet, the low crack was very, very loud.

“Hello, sweetie?” Asked a voice.

“At last,” he sighed in relief.


	11. Chapter 11

She looked as he remembered her, unfazed with her sprawling curls and her leather outfit. She sported utilitarian pants, a vest tight across the chest; it was belted with a stylish black leather space age utility belt, bulging with many tools. He admired her fashion sense even as he walked over.

She tossed her hair out of the way. “Another Nardole! You’re different than the one I left, have you changed your outfit?”

“Um, sure?” Egg replied uncomfortably. “The Missus put herself in charge of all that, she says I’m over-fond of bathrobes…”

River’s eyebrows rose. “The Missus is it? Good on you Nardole, you sly fox. No. Not the clothes. You have glasses! Why are you wearing glasses?” She playfully resettled them on his nose, laughing. “So, where is that man, anyway? Lurking around somewhere?”

“I sent for you,” He chimed in, before Egg could say something he shouldn’t. “I don’t believe we’ve met, I’m the Master.”

Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “River Song. But you knew that. Well he never said you were so sweetly delicious! Such a young, untried face…I could eat you up, honestly.”

“Likewise,” The Master’s grin was predatory.

She met it with one of her own. “My. My, my, my.”

“All right,” said Egg. “You were scary enough separately.”

“So how did you know what was in my diary? Why did you send me those words?”

The Master arched an eyebrow. “Spoilers.”

“That’s my line,” she said, slightly annoyed.

“I know that too.”

She looked over the blasted landscape, the black holes in the ceiling with wires hanging down, sparking now and then.

“He’s dead isn’t he. I mean, he died trying to save something, or someone. Though how you’re mixed up in it,” her eyes flicked to the Master. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

“I’m actually, VERY mixed up in it, ahem.” He coughed delicately and cocked his head towards the figure imperiously making her way over.

“Really?” River said mildly. “My goodness.”

“You don’t seem terribly upset!” Egg remonstrated.

“Oh, I’ve thought the Doctor was dead before. He never is. I can’t imagine this time is any different.” She replied casually.

The Master retreated back a few steps as Missy drew close. He didn’t quite crouch behind Egg. “Who are you?” he heard her ask.

“River Song. And you?”

“You can call me The Master.”

“Um, you know you are a woman, right?”

“Oh, pronouns!” she said it like a curse. “Mistress. Ew, no. Missy. I am Missy.”

“And your Cyber army seems to have deserted you.”

“Yes, I can’t imagine how that happened.”

“Well, I think someone hacked into the computer downstairs that controls the hive mind of these particular group of Cybermen. And connected it to the main hive. Once reunited with all their kindred, naturally the rest wanted these outliers home as soon as possible. Thanks to your recent efforts, their suits have advanced enough to handle space flight, so out they went.”

“Only they aren’t strong enough to move through space and escape the black hole. Especially after going through the ship the hard way. So they were all sucked in.” Missy finished grimly.

“Neat, isn’t it?” River said.

“Lovely.” The face she made did not say ‘lovely’.

“So now what?”

“First, you escort Missy back to her Tardis,” The Master stepped out from behind Egg. “She misplaced it on the bottom floor somewhere. Then, we use your vortex manipulator and evacuate.” He felt Missy’s cold blue eyes on him, but she kept quiet, observing. He tried to only acknowledge River as he spoke. “That’s how you got here, right? Past the black hole? A motorbike through traffic?”

The look River gave him was long and searching. He met the indomitable woman who had married the Doctor in the calculation of her eyes. And she was added to the very small roster of people whom he regarded as dangerous enough to respect.

“Please. Missy first.” The faster he got his other self out of here, the better.

“Can you give me the coordinates?” She turned and asked the woman. Later, she mouthed at the Master forbiddingly. River raised her wrist, opposite fingers ready to type, but Missy held up her hand. “A moment.”

She did what he feared she would. She walked over to him.

“How do you know,” she whispered very softly, very fiercely, “about my Tardis?”

He didn’t have a ready lie she would believe.

Instead, the one thing he desperately wanted to tell her tumbled out.

“Go to him,” he told her urgently. “Don’t go with a scheme, don’t go with more murder on your hands. Just tell him. Find him, lay out everything you know, and what you suspect. He will help you.”

He knew, KNEW it was futile. He had no memory of this place at all. But he said it anyway and felt the relief of releasing a burden. He heard a sound, the reaction of a quick intake of breath. In that instant, she had recognized who he was.

“Why?” she asked him flatly. And he saw himself, the real him, the one behind every incarnation, the one who wore the disguises.

“Because he is your friend. Because he always helps. You don’t have to beg. Just ask! For once.”

She met his gaze fearlessly. He knew her haunted eyes so well. “He hasn’t been my friend for a long, long time. And we both know the reason.”

It felt like so long ago. It was so long ago.

“Then, Missy, are you his?” he asked. “If you really believe you have lost him, could you reclaim him? What price are you prepared to pay?”

He saw he had hit her, she was shocked to her core. But she lifted her chin and said saucily, “What do you know, anyway? As if I’d listen to a teenager!” She smiled infuriatingly at him and returned to River. “I’m ready,” she told the other woman.

He watched her consult with River in low tones. He ached for her.

She was just beginning. She hadn’t had her beautifully intricate gambit disintegrate in front of her eyes; she hadn’t watched her chosen corrupter fail and die. She hadn’t been thrown in a vault for half a century, guarded by her arch-enemy. Her best friend. Her sometime teacher.

She had shot herself in the back, that’s all she had done. The crowning jewel on a lifetime, many lifetimes, of the darkest deeds imaginable piled one on top of the other.

She wasn’t ready. She was starting to be; the horror of what she had been able to do, what future she was rushing towards, pushed her in a direction she had never been. It marked her as different than all those who came before, who couldn’t even listen. But she wasn’t there yet.

There was a flicker, and she and River vanished.


	12. Chapter 12

Another flicker and River was by herself. “Done. That was interesting. The threats were quite creative.”

He lifted an eyebrow sardonically. “My apologies.”

“She asked me how I knew you.”

“Did you tell her?”

River smiled. “I told her, ‘Spoilers’.”

That, he did remember.

“So.” She grew serious. Anger stirred in the depths. “Your whole plan was to fetch me and my vortex manipulator to bail you out of the mess you made. And let me add, the mess you made involved lending your expertise and access to alternate technology to create Cybermen.” Her voice lowered dangerously. “If I didn’t think there had to be another piece to it, if the Doctor hadn’t been involved, I would already be gone. And I’ve only got your word for that, don’t I?”

The Master willed himself to calm. He couldn’t force her. He couldn’t trick her. He had to persuade her somehow. He had to use every weapon he had. “Egg, would you call Hazran and the children?”

“It’s Nardole,” The bald man corrected him crisply. He opened his laptop and hit a couple keys. A minute or so later, a hatch covered in dead grass lifted by the distant elevator. A small woman poked her head out, then climbed free. She reached in and pulled out one, two, three, of the smallest children, then more climbed out behind them. A few adults followed. They looked around, frightened at their familiar home transformed into a blasted dystopic landscape with sparking holes in the sky, all sunk in a murky glow.

“Over here! Come on, lively now!” Nardole called.

They ran to Nardole, the Master, and River.

“This is what the Doctor died for,” the Master told her, with a gesture towards the group of children. “And if he didn’t die, he certainly intended to. He told me so before he did it! It was the best he could come up with; he told me that too. He died blowing up the farm far below us, so Nardole could lead the children and their guardians to safety while destroying a few Cybermen in the process. That was it. That’s all he had. Only now this isn’t safety either. These survivors, these children, need off this ship.”

“If he had called me.” River said quietly. “I would have been here. He knows that.”

“I’m sure it didn’t even occur to him,” He told her. “It’s not how he thinks.”

“The vortex manipulator can only carry a few at the most. It’s a motorbike, not a Suburban.”

“Well, there’s not all that many, really. And I was hoping I could extend the parameters, just for one trip.”

“That much overload could burn it out.” She said it flatly, but he knew the fear it covered. Without that device on her wrist, she would lose her autonomy through time and space. She would lose the Doctor.

He gave her a moment to process. Then he said softly, gently: “River. There is one choice. And only one. You either zip away and leave all of us here to die, or hand that thing over and let me save everyone.” He held out his hand.

“You do not play fair,” she told the Master.

“No, I don’t.” he agreed.

Slowly, never taking her eyes off of him, she unfastened the manipulator. She moved to deposit it in his waiting hand.

“Nardole.” She called, her closed fist an inch away.

“River?”

“You do it.” She dumped the manipulator in Nardole’s lax palm, he almost dropped it.

“Smooth.” The Master complimented her.

“I know how much value you attach to your own hide, and how little to anyone else’s.”

“Oh, darling!” His hand flew to his chest in mock distress. “You wrong me.”

“Why take the chance?” She turned to Nardole. “Can you do this? You’re better at precision work.”

Nardole squinted at it. “I think so, let me just have a look.” He pulled out tiny tools from somewhere on his person and tinkered.

The Master took the opportunity to stride over to what was left of the tool shed. It was half blasted, but the other half was what counted. He reached past the blackened wood and removed his umbrella. “Anyone need something out of the shed?” he exclaimed to the world at large. “Tools? A bucket?” He bent behind the remnants of a wall, shifting items around.

Everyone who was not Nardole stared.

He poked his head up. “Here, have a trowel,” he presented the gardening tool to River in a grandiose gesture. “With apologies for my presumption and heartfelt thanks for the daring rescue.” She crooked a smile in spite of herself and took it. “You never know where one might come in handy,” she acknowledged, stowing it in a pocket on her belt. It was an acceptation of truce. “Though ‘rescue’ is a bit premature, we’re still here.”

“I am ever an optimist. Nardole? Rake?”

“I’ll be all right, thanks the same,” Nardole said. “You haven’t hit your head…or feel like a mechanical upgrade suddenly sounds spiffy? Can this lot shoot Cyberman pollen around to create more?”

“I don’t think we’re there yet,” the Master replied. “They still have to do it the old-fashioned way. Knives and saws.” He showed his teeth exaggeratedly and waggled his eyebrows.

“Yaaaay,” Nardole said in a tiny voice before turning his attention back to his task. The minutes dragged by before he announced: “It’s ready.” He gave the manipulator to River. “We have to bundle together as tightly as we can. I can only expand the radius so much. River in the middle. Come on in, don’t be shy!” They crowded around him, the Master ended up next to the girl Alit. She squeezed in so tight next to him that he heard her whisper perfectly.

“I wish Gazron was here. I wish she could come with us.”

He went absolutely still. Then, he bent down so he could murmur in her ear, as quietly as she asked. “She just went early, that’s all. She’s out there having adventures of her own now.” It was a kind of truth. Philosophers could argue the point. He straightened.

She tugged on him to bend down again, she had more to say. “I miss the Doctor,” she confessed, so low he almost couldn’t decipher her whisper. “Did you know him? He was my friend, too. What if…what if he’s still here somewhere, and we’re leaving him behind?”

It was a long moment before he was able to answer. “I know him,” he murmured. Some days it was the only fact he was sure of. “Do you know what? Even if he’s alive, he isn’t here. He doesn’t stay still, you know. He moves on.” Then he reconsidered his words. “No…that’s not true. Once he stayed put for more than fifty years, not because he had to, but because he decided to. He did it for his dearest friend.” He was glad it was impossible for the girl to see his face. 

“I miss him as well.”


	13. Chapter 13

There was a gut-wrenching, jarring motion and they felt real wind on their faces. Looked up at real stars. And also up to an enormous sign right above them that lit up the night. From directly below, the Master couldn’t even read what it said.

“I wasn’t sure where to drop you,” River told Nardole as they all stepped out of their tight circle with relief. “Basically, it’s the same time frame as when I left. But I thought the entrance to a spaceport might make a good start. This is central enough, you should be able to go anywhere you want. Have you thought about it?”

“I have some ideas. Something…out of the way, not too built up, but not completely primitive either. Where the kids can run around, but they can go to University if they want to later. Maybe with a couple of cities. I like cities.”

River pulled out a metal disc from a belt pouch and gave it to him. “My bank account is at your disposal. Get them settled. Give them a life.” She smiled. “I probably owe you back wages anyway.”

“River,” he protested. “This is too much—”

“Just try not to bankrupt me, will you?” He hugged her, and each of the children—and the adults--came to her and hugged her as well.

The Master stood in the shadows and watched them. He wasn’t sure what he would do, or feel, if anyone tried to hug him. But no one did. Nardole gave him a kind of grim salute. The bald man hadn’t forgotten Gazron, but they’d also worked side by side unto utter exhaustion to save the colony. The Master returned it solemnly in acknowledgement. Then the little group looked at each other and smiled. They all walked into the spaceport.

It was just he and River.

“Well,” she looked at him.

“Well,” he returned.

“It’s not broken.” She studied her vortex manipulator and fiddled with the settings. “It seems fine.”

“I hope you have another one of those discs on you.” The Master said conversationally.

“Yes.” She pulled another out. “See? I have a lot of bank accounts. I don’t think any of them are in my name though. Maybe one. I feel strange. Why am I telling you this? Why aren’t you killing me?”

“I’m in recovery,” he told her. “Remember that trowel I gave you? Back on the ship? It was in the shed with my umbrella. But when I moved a bucket, I also stumbled upon mushrooms I had collected once upon a time, in a basket. I discovered them growing over an entire level during my climb up to the colonists. The fungi are quite potent. I was raving when they found me.”

“Amanita Muscaria probably. Popular hallucinogen. Easier to genetically alter to enhance their effects than other varieties. They’re the base of my lipstick.”

“I suspect one of the maintenance workers had a little side business going. Anyway. I found that drying them actually distills their properties.”

“It would. Can I lie down? The world seems to have tilted.” River swayed precariously. The Master caught her. “Whoa. Let’s get you to a hotel.”

“Funny, I don’t remember eating mushrooms.”

“No, but you held the handle of the trowel, that’s what I rubbed them on. Liberally. And then I carefully gave it to you by the metal end.”

“You knew it wouldn’t hit me until now, until we were out of danger. The absorption rate is…slowed… through… the…skin.” The last was drawn out, distracted.

“Twenty minutes actually, I was able to test it precisely. I had a lot of down time after I sent out the cube, what took you so long?”

“I prefer to not walk into the unknown,” she said. “I chose my moment. Oh, the ground is full of diamonds!” She picked up a pebble.

A shadow passed over his face. “Better than the sky.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Leave that.”

“But…diamonds. Look! That one is a ruby.”

“You said there was a hotel.”

“We’re at a spaceport, of course there’s a hotel. There’s one across the street. I’ve stayed there, I think, once…maybe ‘stay’ is the wrong word….”

And there was. River clung to him, apparently unable to walk across the suddenly gaping holes in the diamond pavement. 

It was not an unpleasant sensation.

“Don’t let me fall.”

“I won’t. I wouldn’t.”

“The lady has had a bit too much.” He said to the clerk working the front desk after he wrangled her through the doors and into the lobby. “We need to call it a night.”

“Your mother?”

“My aunt,” the Master couldn’t bring himself to say ‘yes’ to ‘mother’. “She has these spells sometimes.”

“Don’t push it,” growled River.


	14. Chapter 14

They struggled in the direction the solicitous clerk sent them, River only remained upright through her white knuckled grip on the Master’s shirt. At least he wasn’t in a dress anymore. Then, she dragged her toes and he stopped, looked at her quizzically. With a wicked smile she wiped her hand—hard--down his bare forearm.

By the time they reached the room he was carrying her. He lay her carefully on the bed. She didn’t move. He hesitated, then headed into the bathroom to wash his arm. He turned on the light…and stopped.

The mirror, that took up the entire wall, showed him himself.

He was a gawky kid.

Well, more handsome than gawky, his vanity amended quickly. His hair was black and fell to jaw length in waves around his face. His eyes were a startling green. It made him wonder if a little Harry Potter had crept into his feature selection. They stood out against his swarthy skin tone. He actually had a cute nose, with a hint of a soft upturn.

He looked all of sixteen.

He supposed if he lived long enough he would age out of it. And admittedly, it did have a kind of appropriateness. He forced himself away from his reflection, opened the soap out of its paper—this hotel still had paper-wrapped soap, how quaint—and scrubbed thoroughly up to where his sleeve was rolled on his elbow.

He turned off the water, dried with a towel, hit the light on the way out. River was still draped on the bed. Could it be this easy? Making no sound, he walked around to her side, bent over to unsnap the vortex manipulator from her wrist.

There was a click and a sudden, cold, pressure above his eyes. A gun buried itself against his head.

“Get out, right now, and we’ll call it even.”

The Master retreated at once a few feet back.

“Well? You’re still standing there.”

“Like you can hit anything in that state.”

“I see three of you quite distinctly and I am willing to bet at least one of them is real. I can shoot all three before you take a breath. Even if you have six arms. Don’t test me.”

The gun was shaking slightly; only sheer will kept it as steady as it was, and God knows what she thought she was holding.

“Why can’t I take the vortex manipulator? What are you going to do with it?” he asked softly.

“In what backwards-land have you been living where just because you want a thing, makes it yours?”

He shrugged. “In my experience, that’s generally how it works.”

She smiled dryly. “I believe it. But not from me. And I’ll do the same as I’ve always done. Going here and there; bumping into the Doctor if I'm lucky--”

And then, the Master knew how to win.

“--Or, if you try hard. Because you always have to try, don’t you?”

“What?” she asked, baffled.

“He knew he was dead, back on that ship. It was his last stand, his final hour, and he never once thought to reach out to you. He could have done what I did. He didn’t even have to go to that effort, you have easier ways to contact each other. The truth is he didn’t…even…think…about you.”

Her head shook side to side in the negative, but she didn’t respond. The gun still pointed at him.

“He’s never said anything, has he? He falls into wherever you are, you have an adventure, and he’s out. One might as well love a forest fire.”

“He said something once.” She said, her tone level.

“Recently? And he wasn’t trying to get you to do anything when he said it? I suppose it just came out one day when you were both happy in each other’s company and the flowers were in bloom. He just said it to let you know.” The Master laughed without mirth. “I doubt it.”

“I know about you. He told me.”

The Master grew very, very still.

“I would not expect he’d keep that from his wife.”

“You had his child.”

Instinctual cold terror washed over him at it being said aloud. It didn’t matter anymore, he told himself.

“We were very young…and reckless,” he said quickly.

“He let it happen, you know, because he thought he was losing you.” River’s eyes were very bright and they bored into him. “He thought if you had a child together it would bind you to him and you would stay. That you’d forget about your unfortunate penchant for killing and mayhem. You’d have a new life to care for instead. The idiot! Sometimes, he is so naive.”

He felt his insides shatter. Like a fist hitting a sheet of ice and breaking it in a thousand pieces.

“I loved power more than him,” he admitted quietly. “More than her. What does he love more than you?”

“I know what he thinks of me. He doesn’t have to say it,” she said between gritted teeth.

“No. Because you exist on crumbs and treats. Snatched minutes between your real lives. That’s all, and you roll it around in your head and make it more than it is. Was it even his idea to marry you? Did he ask you, properly ask; or was it in the middle of some frenetic caper and a wedding was a tidy solution to whatever problem he was trying to work around?”

He had struck something because she didn’t reply. Her breathing was ragged. The gun didn’t move.

“Why do you want this?” She motioned with one hand, where the device sat on it like an ornament; the other didn’t waver from the drawn gun. “You have a Tardis. I just put the other you in it.”

“I have the advantage of hindsight,” he told her. “I must have that vortex manipulator because the continued health of your husband requires it. And isn’t it time to grow up? To admit what you know in your heart, what you’ve always known? You’re free from prison, you can do what you want now. That gadget on your wrist is nothing but false hope to fuel your little fantasy, it’s a phone number for someone who doesn’t really want to take your call. What are you still holding onto it for? River. River Song. Beloved of the Doctor,” He hit a note of sarcasm on ‘beloved’. “You simply don’t need it anymore.”

It was the same small noise he heard when he stabbed himself. Just a slight interruption of breath. And he felt the same: the horror, the self-loathing, and the tiny fragment of exultation.  
She was on one side of the room. He on the other. But he had driven a knife of words into her flesh and wounded her, perhaps mortally.

Worse, because he knew he lied.

“Take it then.” The gun went down, she fumbled at her wrist and threw the manipulator at him. “Take it if you want it so badly. Perhaps I don’t need it. Perhaps I am done.”

It was heavy and her aim was excellent, it hit him in the sternum. He choked to breathe for a second.

Painfully he bent down and picked it up off the floor. “Thank you,” he told her. Polite, empty words.

“You’re welcome,” she answered in the same vein.

As he quietly shut the door, he heard nothing. Silence. It was somehow worse than a sound.


	15. Chapter 15

Once outside the hotel, he paced through the night, not caring where he went.

The Doctor wanted the child…because…because…

No. No. No.

He thought.

He thought it would.

Bind him.

Doctor.

“The alternative is that this is for real. And it’s time for us to become friends again,”

“I do what I do because it’s right! It’s decent! And above all, it’s kind.”

“You see, that’s what I’m trying to teach you, Missy. You understand the universe, you see it, you grasp it… but you’ve never learned to hear the music.”

He couldn’t be here by himself! He hadn’t been this kind of alone since before he met the Doctor at the Academy. Even when they weren’t together he knew his friend was out there…and usually vowed vengeance when he thought of it. It was the backbone of his life!

He would have flung himself in the vault once more to have those years back, he would have lived through it all again—he felt an envy of Missy as sharp and green as bottle glass. That was still to come for her. It’s funny how we don’t realize when we’re trapped in hell, there’s the possibility it could turn out to be heaven, he thought ruefully. All the memories--reading side by side and talking when they felt like it. The role-playing scenarios as part of his “good” lessons, and how angry the Doctor would get when he wouldn’t take it seriously. Watching movies on his small television, his friend begging him not to sing “Let it Go” along with Elsa. Dancing to My Fair Lady. Take out nights, and stories. So many stories.

He realized, somewhere in there, that he was crying.

He didn’t care, hurrying through the night, though he had no idea what he’d say if anyone asked. Too much, perhaps.

No one did. Tears make witnesses uncomfortable, unwilling to get involved.

He didn’t wipe them away, he didn’t try to stop them. It was the first honest emotion he had had for years that he wasn’t frightened of, or didn’t try to lie to himself about, or pretend it was something else. They were tears for the Doctor. They were tears for his other self.


	16. Chapter 16

The Doctor had not told him about this day.

Ultimately, he couldn’t trust his oldest friend to see him that vulnerable. No, the Master had found it in the Matrix, before he left Gallifrey. He had been on his way to this spot, to this hour, when his Tardis crashed on the colony ship. After that fiasco, he became a new person with other ideas. Better ideas. Better than to use the item here as a weapon, anyway.

There was silence in the Library.

It was so quiet, he could feel where the quadrants of activity had taken place. It was so undisturbed, he could smell the lingering fear the humans had left behind.

A shadow grew large where it shouldn’t.

“You promised him a day.” The Master told the dark. “It isn’t over yet.”

The shadow shrank back.

He traced the crude marker drawing on a gorgeous wooden table, polished to a sheen. He knew whose hand had drawn it. He wished there was a way to pry it loose and take it with him. In another gallery, a chicken bone rolled under his feet.

But the object he sought was still ahead. He could feel it. It warped time and space with its own weight, did his friend never realize that, never see?  
He found it on top of a balcony rail. On a stack of books where it had been carefully placed. With a screwdriver.

He pocketed the screwdriver. That was a bonus.

“I swear I will do no harm with this,” he raised his voice to the ghosts in this place. “I use it only to aid the Time Lord known as the Doctor. I swear this as his friend, The Master.”

He thought River might appear. He knew she was here in the mainframe, and he wondered if she could manifest out of it, and what in the world he would possibly say to her. He wasn’t sure he could bear it. Her words and his still clung to his mind, burrowing inside like maggots.

Maybe she didn’t know either, because he remained alone. Perhaps his oath was enough to assuage her. He lifted the worn book with the Tardis blue cover. He smiled a little over that. Other Tardis’ didn’t have a color, they changed form to blend in as they were supposed to. Only the Doctor’s was a blue phone box forever. ‘Tardis blue’ only ever meant his.

Diary in hand, the Master activated the vortex manipulator.

*

“I need to borrow one of your staff!” He shouted to the maître de, over the roar of the busy restaurant. “Well, borrow is the wrong word. Consider this his very short notice.”

“What?” The dark woman leaned forward, puzzled.

“I need to speak with Nardole! He’s the robot thing!”

“You mean Ramone?”

“The other one!”

“Oh. Um, we don’t usually allow them in the lobby, would you mind--?”

“Fine,” The Master stalked back into the maze of tables and ambient lighting. The robot wasn’t hard to miss, it was clunking around chairs carefully supporting a tray of wine glasses. He’d forgotten there were two. The charming Ramone was on top at the moment.

The Master sighed. It would just add a momentary wrinkle, that was all.

He waited until all the glasses had been set down in front of the diners before he grabbed ahold of the robot and pulled out his vortex manipulator.

 *

 Ramone was easy. Hydroflax had flown by himself to apprehend the handsome man, and left the body bleeding in the snow. Three seconds after the cyborg had replaced the head and stomped off, the Master arrived.

The headless body twitched and spewed blood alarmingly.

“Grab it!” The Master ordered.

“What?” squeaked Nardole from his high robot perch.

“Really? This is what you balk at? Fine. Stand beside me.” He leaned the body against him and set coordinates unperturbed as his clothing splashed rhythmically with spurting blood.


	17. Chapter 17

His first instinct was to kill the guards who were dragging Nardole’s lifeless body after it had been relieved of its head. But that was the old way.

“I need this body. Would you trade it for this money?” Ramone and Nardole were tipped well, and they had squirrelled all hard currency away in their carapace. They offered it gladly for the rescue effort. The guards were there alone, Hydroflax was out trying to capture his perfidious wife.

Nardole was steadfastly not looking at his limp, bloody body sans head, instead he sprayed Ramone’s severed neck with coagulant spray he took from a medical tray and at least one body stopped bleeding. He aimed for the other still held by the monks, his eyes shut, a piteous wail escaping as he squeezed. The neck became buried in gray foam, and the head in the robot quickly switched to Ramone.

The monks stared at the Master. The nearest brandished their swords. “We are warrior monks! We will not be bribed!” One moved forward menacingly.

“Oh, I haven’t seen those in forever!” the Master said admiringly, running his finger along the edge of the thrust sword set to impale him. “Sentient swords, right? I always wanted one.” He pushed it aside. “All right boys, here it is. I can trade you the money for the body, a simple business transaction. Or, it can get extraordinarily messy.” He moved his jacket aside for a moment enough for them to see a bulging vessel at his waist. In the shadows they couldn’t tell it was a lopsided basket. He put his hand on the lid as if he prepared to turn it. “One dial spin and you are paralyzed while I leave with the body anyway and confiscate your swords. Ten seconds later the pressure will become too great and your organs will explode and ooze out of your orifices.” Then he spoke to the sword closest to him. “Then, I think I’ll take a detour and melt down the swords. You will all die in agony. All.”

The ringleader’s bravado outshone his intelligence. “We will not yield if our swords do not! The Fortress of Fehl is impregnable, and it’s the only place the swords can be destroyed!” he shouted defiantly.

“Which I can get to in an instant, did you see me arrive? Easy to bypass guards if you just stop off for a second to hurl a few bits of metal into their pet white dwarf star,” He jeered evilly at the nearest blade. It appeared to shiver slightly. “So yes or no? Frankly, I like the idea of murdering you; it’s been a very long time since my last bout of random slaughter, and it would be so…fun. But I will try to negotiate. I am in recovery, and a killing spree would really be a backward step.” He held out the money temptingly.

The swords were actually pulling their handlers away from him, and the guards didn’t look half so frightening holding reluctant blades. They glanced at each other and at their swords in wordless communion. Then they dropped the body in unison.

“Recovery from what?” One asked, sickened, as they grabbed at the money.

The Master shrugged. “A bit of everything. Genocide, torture, murder, arson, tyranny…you know. The usual.”

The guards fled.

“I really wanted to kill them,” The Master complained to the robot.

Ramone looked at him fearfully.

“Oh, come on, at least Nardole has more gumption. I’m not going to eat you.”

“What’s he saying about me?” Came a voice from the chest.

“I’m really not sure,” Ramon yelled down.

The Master finally noticed his surroundings. He hadn’t seen such a supreme setup in years. It was marvelous. And the icing on the cake were the silent spectators on the television screens. A breathtaking medical suite and an audience of…he glanced at the array complexity, camera capability, satellite feeds, number of tvs…perhaps four billion? Maybe goodness did have its own reward.

“Hi!” He told the cameras. “Sorry about the confusion. I’m the surgeon.” He flashed his most charming smile--conscious of how well this would play on his new face--and winked. “Since Hydroflax seems to be up and about, today I’ll be restoring a couple of brave heroes to their very own bodies. I may need to augment with a bit of machinery to make it work, but we can handle that, can’t we? Let’s have a cheer for our venerated veterans, Nardole and Ramone!” He was rewarded with actual applause on every screen.

This was fantastic! Where had this been all his life?

“You can call me The Master, because I’m the Master of surgery.” He shucked off his faded button-down shirt with rolled sleeves that the colonists had given him, now liberally painted with dried blood. And,” he raised his eyebrows lasciviously, “other things too!”

He may have posed for a moment in weedy, bare-chested glory before dramatically plucking what he recognized as a surgeon’s robe from a handy hook, and throwing it over his head. He ruffled his hair more than necessary before donning the accompanying cap.

The cheering was even more enthusiastic.

Then he proceeded to restore both men’s heads to their bodies urged on by his own personal chorus of four billion. It was just like saving the vole while his friend watched. Only so much better.

As he thought, there were some mechanics involved. Well, a lot of mechanics. But, really, he had done an outstanding job. One of his best efforts.

Four billion people agreed.

“I’ll be back, don’t you worry,” he promised, with a little wave.

He turned to his patients and the glittery smile came off.

“Ramone, I’m your ride home. Where would you like that to be? I can take you anywhere in the universe.”

Ramone was startled. “I don’t know—um—”

“Well, I think—” began Nardole. The Master covered the bald man’s mouth with his hand. “Not you! You and I have further business. Ramone?”

“All right. I have it.” He named a city on a distant planet, the Master held on to both of them tightly, tapped numbers onto the band on his wrist, and an instant later they were there.

“Wow. That’s really good.” Ramone looked around. “Nardole,” he stuck out his hand. Nardole shook it cautiously. “I want to say that it was nice working with you. But it got a little too close at the end.”

“You could say that,” Nardole heartily concurred.

Ramone smiled, and gave a jaunty salute. He was about to turn and lose himself in a sea of pedestrians when the Master called out: “Ramone! Say, is there a costume shop nearby? Somewhere that sells robes, like…priests’ robes?” He pulled out River’s disc from his pocket, twirled between his fingers. Then, he looked down at his formerly crisp surgical garb, now stained and grimy. His faded jeans underneath still bore rusty blotches that itched against his skin. “I might need a few other items as well.”


	18. Chapter 18

“Where are we?” Nardole asked.

“It’s usually just called the execution planet, along with a lot of swearing. Hush, I need to see.” He poked his head around a rock. “All right. They’re still a ways off.” He wished he had longer to break in his new boots. They were too bulky to bend well, and the chain that looped around his ankle rattled. Other than that, he was pleased with his outfit. He kept the jeans but exchanged them for black. The chains slung around his waist from the front pocket to the back matched the ones on his boots. His sleeveless denim jacket was also black, and he wore it open so his silk ribbed tank top could be seen. The tank top was green. Red accents were so passé. The fact it matched his eyes perfectly was pure coincidence. In addition to the irritatingly clanking chains, it was a little chilly. Maybe he could get some sort of rugged lined coat with long sleeves for actual weather. But he liked the feeling of fresh air on his shoulders, and something about the ensemble felt better than anything he had worn for a long time. He straightened, and so did Nardole.

“Nardole,” the Master put a comradely hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Have you ever met River Song’s husband?”

Nardole looked at him as if he were insane. “What?”

“River Song’s husband. You do know about her husband, right? Of course you do. And since you’re between jobs at the moment, what would you say if he became your new boss?”

“Um.”

“Bear in mind.” His fingers on the shoulder started to dig painfully. “You were just rescued from a permanent sojourn as one-half a waiter robot. And the one who rescued you is now asking for a small--”—he indicated an inch with pinched fingers—“--favor. And also bear in mind that it wouldn’t be too hard to take you apart that same way. Only this time there’s no handy robot body to stuff you back into.”

Nardole was beginning to make terrified tea kettle noises.

“But there’s no cause for unpleasantness.” He let go and stepped back with a broad smile. “Is there?”

“You want me to work for the Doctor?” the other man was confused. Then his expression cleared. “Ooooh, as your secret spy! Am I going to poison him, sabotage his Tardis, report to you on everything he does? Will we have code words?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” The Master assured him. No need, for one thing, he thought dryly. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t be there too. “Just…work for the Doctor. Switch employers. You were working for River, now you’re with the Doctor. That’s it. Capiche?”

“Hmm.” Nardole seemed to stare right through him. “So why didn’t you just say, ‘Nardole, would you like to work for the Doctor now?’ I might have said yes.”

The Master sighed. Free will was such a pain in the ass. “And you might have said no. It’s too important for you to say no.” He ran his hands through his hair trying to collect his thoughts in some sort of coherence. “For what is ahead--the Doctor is going to need someone steady at his side. Someone not only to help him, but to take care of him. Someone who sees more of the whole picture than those chattering children he keeps adopting. Someone with a clue.”

The water sparkled. The wind blew.

“All right!” said Nardole crossly. “I’ll do it. And not because of any of your threats either! Honestly. You have to start giving people a chance, sometimes. And be a little flexible if it doesn’t go the way you want it to,” he scolded.

“Yes, well, there’s one more thing.” The Master sighed. This one was a doozy. “I’m glad you’ve accepted, fantastic, welcome aboard. However. When I put you back together, I had to give you some programming to cover the gaps that your body won’t take care of by itself anymore.”

“Yes?” said Nardole. “I figured. And?”

“I made the code open-ended, to add additional instruction,” he said delicately.

Nardole’s mouth dropped open. “In other words, you have the ability to hard-wire commands that I’m not going to remember, that will just be part of who I am from now on. I do dabble in computers,” he said angrily.

“I know you do,” the Master returned.

“Wait, why are you telling me this, why aren’t you just doing it?” There was a pause. “Have you already done it? Because I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“Well, I was going to up until about thirty seconds ago. I mean, that would be easier,” he hesitated. “I know I’ll regret it but…I’m going to give you a choice, a real choice. I won’t do it without your permission. We’ve done so much, you and I; spent weeks patching up an ailing colony ship, we’ve fought Cybermen together--”

“We’ve what?” Nardole was alarmed.

“Nardole.” He said firmly, “Here it is: The Doctor needs you. He doesn’t understand how much he does right now. But the only way he will accept you and your help is if he doesn’t know how you got here.” He pulled out the diary from an inner jacket pocket and handed it over.

“This is River’s diary,” gasped Nardole.

“It’s also your credentials. You give him that, he won’t look too closely at the rest of it. I’ve marked the page you need to read. You have to tell him you come from River. That she sent you, that you followed the Doctor from Darillium on her orders. He can’t know about me, Nardole. He will never believe your help is genuine if he has the least suspicion I had a hand in it. That’s why I want to program it in. So you won’t be lying to the Doctor, you’ll believe it yourself. It will be true then, in a way.”

Nardole thought about it. “Can you add that I have been given full permission by River to kick the Doctor’s ass?”

“Absolutely!” grinned the Master.

“Where did this come from, anyway?” Nardole ran his hand over the front of the book.

“The Doctor left in the Library where River died,” The Master looked away. “He didn’t know their story then, and he didn’t want to. He wanted to live it. But now the story is over, and he should have the diary back.”

“Spoilers,” Nardole said somberly.

“Not anymore.”

Both men were quiet as they peered out beyond the execution platform which looked for all the world like a fancy boxing ring. A boat was coming up the river.

“You have to get the robes on. Decide while you’re changing. The procedure won’t take but a second or two. It’s only a few lines of code.”

He helped Nardole garb himself. There was a lot of fabric, and a surplice to fit over it all, and it was really a two-person job. It took a couple of tries before they got all of it on the right way around.

“Go.” Said Nardole when his face finally poked through the correct hole in the hood. “Do it.” Then, anxiously: “That’s it, right? Just the stuff about River…you won’t turn me into your minion mole assassin…or some brainless Igor thing…or anything like that, will you?”

The Master smiled. “I won’t. Promise.”

“Well I guess I have to trust you. Even if you did make nasty threats.” He glared, then shrugged. “Apparently we’ve fought Cybermen together.”

“And won.” The Master pulled out the screwdriver.

He had to watch the small group by the lake carefully for the timing, though he hated to see himself go through it again. He remembered that day so well.

“Now!” He gave Nardole a push.

As the robed figure walked away down the winding path, the Master implemented the change. His new screwdriver was really going to come in handy. He’d have had to open the man’s head again otherwise.

He listened to Nardole speak and allowed himself a self-congratulatory swell of victory.

It was replaced with the bleakest longing as he watched the current activate, Missy fall. The Doctor give his word.

He wanted more than anything in the world go over to his friend and just say hello.

Then he wondered, why the hell not?

The Doctor had unexpected help that day after the head priest had fled. An awestruck young acolyte, in somewhat unconventional dress for an ecclesiast, came out from behind a rock and offered to assist the Doctor and Nardole to get Missy into the vault.

It turned out it was a good thing he did. He knew the vault. They didn’t.

It was so hard to tell them goodbye when it was done. More so, because the Doctor was overly curt with his zealous admirer, impatient to leave. You can’t tell someone in a hurry that it’s the last time you will ever talk to him. Especially if he doesn’t recognize you.


	19. Chapter 19

 

The screams of the idle drinkers in the bar replaced the dubious music coming from the stage. The Master was relieved. His ears hurt less without the atrocious moaning of tortured instruments. He was used to screams.

He carefully fell from his barstool and lay motionless. His arm flopped convincingly out of the second set of robes he had purchased, wrist enticingly exposed. He worried about a stray laser penetrating his hidden body armor, or that his perception filter wouldn’t work as advertised. Then he had to stop. Seriously? Since when had he worried about a plan of his, ever? Was this some weird side effect of good?

“UPGRADE OR BE DELETED,” came the atonal proclamation. “DELETE. DELETE.”

Crunch, crunch, went the tread of mechanical marching.

Bang, crash, shriek. The shrieking never actually stopped. An orange glow to his right. The sudden stink of smoke. Yay. A fire. It sounded like considerably more deleting than upgrading was going on, the lasers razed everything in sight.

Where _was_ she?

“Have you met my boys? They’re feeling a bit muscular today. We so needed a night out,” came a familiar voice.

He centered and seized the calm he needed to mentally stop his body functions for a few seconds. Some Time Lords could do it at will, he had only succeeded once. Today had better be the second.

He felt a soft touch on his wrist. He would have held his breath if he wasn’t already determinedly dead. This was it. He held everything in. Perfectly still. His hearts ceased to beat. His blood to pump. Even then, the contact between them should have alerted her it was her own arm she held, but the noise, her wild delight in her scheme, the lust in the deaths, and the destruction of the bar was all too distracting. He had counted on it.

“Oh. Dead already. Pity,” The female tones were disappointed. “I was looking forward to killing you personally. Well, after you told me where you got this rather rare item, anyway. It was going to be such a delightful chat! My boys are wonderful help, but they do lack finesse,” she explained regretfully.

Hold it, hold it.

She removed the vortex manipulator and dropped the seemingly lifeless appendage back to the ground. “It’s been lovely, but I have to dash. Your gift is much appreciated.” He was sure there was a curtsy at the end.

He continued to hold it another few seconds while she turned around and walked off.

Slowly he commenced breathing once more. His hearts beat. His blood, released from stasis, pounded through him. He really hoped he could get to his feet without passing out. That would truly disrupt his plan.

He couldn’t believe when the costume shop had wearable perception filters. And they were using them for costumes! These people deserved whatever bilking they got.

“It’s not invisibility,” explained the clerk. “It just lets the eye see what it expects to see. You turn into someone in a crowd, or a door or chair if you’re in an empty room. Very useful.

Yes, very useful. He was wondering why the garments weren’t already outlawed for their many creative uses. He could think of several dozen without trying very hard.

And one, the first one that instantly occurred, was to beat a Time Lady back to her Tardis.

He activated the filter--just another Cyberman, guys, nothing to see here--and swiftly wound his way to an innocuous brass pole that wasn’t a brass pole. Luckily many of the Cybermen were still finishing mop up, Missy didn’t want survivors to tattle about her new acquisitions.

“Request scan,” he ordered the pole under his breath. Missy would have opened it with a touch, but Time Lords had this way of rearranging their DNA, so new regenerations were scanned before his Tardis would accept him. No clunky keys for him.

Once in, he knew he had seconds…but he had to admire her handiwork. He was forcibly reminded that _his_ Tardis was a state of the art piece of machinery, and the decor was completely open to whatever the owner could dream up. Fixed rooms that looked like the dirty back-end of a struggling space station were for lesser Time Lords in bargain basement roadsters.

The main deck had been transformed into a lush courtyard of a private garden. The doors he ran through opened onto an atrium, bounded with stately columns dripping with flowers. The raised path under his feet circled the central greenery to a restful porch festooned with urns directly opposite him. Daylight streamed through the clouds overhead. The console, designed to perfectly blend with the theme unless in use, appeared as a fountain in the middle of a sculpted pond. It was ringed with paving stones, accenting the carpet of green grass it seemed to float on. How he had missed it!

At least Missy was nearly done with her current project.

He shut the door as the first Cyberman was about to enter. He felt, rather than heard, his counterpart’s shock and dismay, and then her mad sprint across the bar. If she reached the door, it would let her in. It was all over then. He supposed he should be grateful she was in a corset and high heels.

He activated the console, and fed it the coordinates. Birds sang somewhere above. He almost sang with them.

He was off.

And that, my friends, he thought with supreme satisfaction, is how you swap a vortex manipulator for a Tardis.

After landing, he opened his door—well, doors now—to the large hospital room with so many wonderful toys, and four billion spectators breathlessly awaiting his arrival. He had been gone for less than a minute. He exited the Tardis, which had become a medical closet. He felt the adoration of the watching populace through the monitors and a thrill flew through his entire being.

Whatever would he do with them?

What _couldn’t_ he do?

**Author's Note:**

> Also, check out my thoughts on all things Doctor Who (New Who), reviews, actors, behind the scenes and more: https://maurinetritch.wordpress.com/


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